“We are focusing on US, Western Europe, China and a few other Asian markets,” he told me. “Taking a more measured approach to our expansion, and keeping it in sync with markets where online advertising is mature enough.” Volpi pointed out that Joost launched in China two weeks ago, and has recently signed content partnerships in Scandinavia. When you add to the mix UK, France and a couple of other Western European countries, Volpi said it is pretty obvious that the company is not scaling back from its global ambitions.

“What we are not doing is chasing every market, because as a start-up we need to be focused,” Volpi added. Due to its heritage – it was started by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis – Joost had received a lot of press coverage. God knows, I wrote about them a few times. The fact that it is run by Volpi, a highly regarded former Cisco executive and funded by the likes of uber VC funds Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, it is hardly a surprise that Joost is being closely scrutinized. The company raised about $45 million in May 2007.

Joost was supposed to be the delivery vehicle for Hollywood content in the US. Instead, Hulu, a web-based video company backed by major networks chose its thunder and market, leaving Joost scrambling to play catch up. It has Viacom and CBS as its primary US partners, and it clearly needs to sign-up more A-list type content providers. Furthermore, the BBC’s iPlayer (where the former Joost CTO currently works), Kangaroo and other players are beginning to challenge Joost on its turf in Europe as well.

When I asked Volpi about layoffs, he said that company realigned its work force. A few people were let go recently, as I first reported for NewTeeVee. Many contractors were cut as well.

As a result Joost of today is a trimmer version of its former self, thanks to pruning by Volpi, who became Joost CEO in May 2007. Some of these details were outlined in a Portfolio article. I tried to pin down Volpi on the total number of employees the company currently has, but he would not comment.

Rafat in his report says that Joost has about 100 employees. By that yardstick and my own not-quite-confirmed-data, that’s a head count reduction of around 35 to 40. Volpi said that the company is adding more “engineering” folks in their New York office and contrary to published reports has no plans to shut down the Netherlands operation.